Inner City Initiatives

In a period of social upheaval, IBM launches inner city initiatives throughout the country and deepens its commitment to real diversity.

1960

World population reaches 3 billion.

First Paralympic Games held in Rome. In 1996 the Paralympics bring more than 3,000 athletes with disabilities from 120 countries to Atlanta, Georgia.

1961

Russian astronaut Yury Gagarin becomes the first person in space.

The Berlin Wall is built by the German Democratic Republic.

Ninety percent of U.S. homes have televisions.

1962

Founding of the United Farm Workers (UFW) by Mexican Americans Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta.

Soviet missile crisis at the height of the Cold War.

Ed Roberts becomes the first quadriplegic to enroll at the University of California, Berkeley, campus. Expected to fail, Roberts earns a bachelor's degree and a master's ("I'm paralyzed from the neck down, but not from the neck up," he liked to say). While there, his lifelong fight for the rights of the disabled begins when he founds "Rolling Quads," the campus disability rights group.

1963

President Kennedy is assassinated.

1964

Congress ratifies the Civil Rights Act, which outlaws discrimination by employers or government on the basis of race or sex.

1965

Watts riots occur in Los Angeles.

Malcolm X is assassinated.

U.S. Immigration Act abolishes anti-Chinese immigration quota system.

1969

U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong walks on the moon.

At Stonewall Bar in New York City, gays confront police, and the gay rights movement begins.

With his novel House Made of Dawn, N. Scott Momaday becomes the first Native American writer to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.